Chapter Text
Sirius Black was a whore. He had been sleeping with anything that asked him since he was far too young and doing any substance that fell in his way. He was reckless and beautiful, the essence of sex and self-loathing, a walking time bomb, a rockstar, a traumatised boy. Self-harm came in too many ways for him to count and he worshipped each one as if he were Pythia and they were Apollo.
*
Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Toms a junkie
Strung out in heaven’s high
Hitting an all time low
- “Ashes to Ashes,” David Bowie.
London, Black Manor
Sixteen-year-old Sirius Black stood in the shower, studying the deep bruise that was forming across his torso. His mother hadn’t meant to hit him this hard, although perhaps she simply meant to hit him harder. Walburga Black had never apologised, never regretted a blow, and never said ‘I love you’.
To a younger boy, this was devastating. Sirius had never understood why his mother simply hated him. He had never understood why his father watched each blow with a knowing smile.
To a younger boy, each strike, each punishment, felt like the end of the world, and yet to a Sirius that grew too early, each time his mother hit, he was reminded that one day, he could hit back harder.
Sirius Black had been twelve when he had realised that ways to escape his cruel mind were much more accessible than he had originally thought. It started with a few fags snuck from older boys’ dorm rooms and developed into a crippling dependency on being completely out of his mind. He had first slept with a girl at thirteen and he had first slept with a boy six months after. He had first realised that sex was an escape weeks after that. Sirius had been pretty from a young age and had since learnt how to use his looks to snort coke with older men. All the boy knew was that whatever happened, it was not his fault.
The shower stopped; Sirius’s clammy hands struggled against reaching for the pills in his trouser pocket. If his mother caught him high, he wouldn’t be fed for a week. His summers always seemed like this, dull and depressed from a sudden sobriety, manic and reckless from every relapse. He went back to school clammy, shaken and quiet.
He had only just got back from the school where he had boarded for the last five years and would board for two more. His suitcase still laid abandoned by the doors of Black Manor in the hope that someone would still come and rescue him. Of course, his mother hadn’t been happy to see him, but rather looked down at her son with cold grey eyes before hitting him swiftly for letting himself go. This was unsurprising, as his family prided themselves on reputation, classism, money. Toujours pur they said. Always pure.
A sharp noise came from Sirius’s bedroom door, so the dark-haired boy wrapped a towel round his waist and prepared to face whoever had knocked.
With relief, the door swung open to reveal a stern looking maid, who spoke kindly, “Your mother and father are downstairs, Sirius. They expected you twenty minutes ago.”
“Right” Sirius nodded, “Coming then, I’ll be quick.”
She looked down at him in pity, “They’ll be angry, but I doubt you didn’t know that.” Her dark eyes lingered on the damaged skin at his torso, before smiling weakly, “Regulus is already down with your parents.”
Sirius nodded again, “Tell them I’ll be down shortly.” He paused warily. “Do you know what it’s about.”
Talks with his parents never went well, academic success meant nothing to them when they knew he would never amount to anything anyway.
She looked sympathetic. “I’m afraid I don’t, young man, but they did look through your room over your last term, look through your suitcases. I worry they found something.”
Sirius paled, but pulled himself together slowly, “Guess that would explain my mother’s loving welcome.” He smiled, gesturing to his chest.
“Good luck, my boy, god knows you’ll need it.”
She was an older maid, who had worked with the Black family for years, Sirius had always wondered why the poor women hadn’t quit years ago, but he was always thankful for a somewhat friendly face in the house.
Sirius didn’t go downstairs, instead he quickly got dressed before throwing himself to the floor beneath his untouched bed. “Fuck” he spat, at the absence of the battered box that had once laid under the safety of Sirius’s bed. “FUCK” he yelled, hitting his head to the floor in frustration.
Fuck.
I warned you. Hide. It. Better. I said.
Fuck.
He stood up and swung open his balcony doors, before slinging his legs over the fence and hanging off the edge with reckless trust of his thin limbs. He moved to a drainpipe and slid down with the ease of someone who had done this often. Sirius’s feet hit the warm soil and he relaxed slightly, letting out thin, shaky sobs as his body crumpled against the brick of Black Manor. Freedom was unlikely, but peace was always welcomed.
Sirius finally stood, glancing around warily before popping a few pills and pulling out a cigarette carton. He took one from the pack, and lit it, deeply inhaling the smoke before letting his head hit the brick behind him. The boy knew he wasn’t visible from inside the house, and no one cared enough to look for him. He just hoped that his parents could get over themselves and ignore his absence, without the need to send some poor maid in search of their son.
After moments filled with shaky hands and chain smoking, Sirius finally let his guard down, back pressed against the cold wall behind him. No one was here. He could just leave. The boy just wished he hadn’t left his cases abandoned in the hall. He held is face up to the sun that beat down every summer. Its relentless warmth gave Sirius comfort, even though he had always preferred rain.
He knew he was unlucky, but fortune did not take his side. The boy’s eyes snapped open to see his father looming over him.
“Sirius, your mother wants you”. The man said coldly, before tugging his sons chin up to force the boy to look him in the eyes, angry confusion becoming apparent on his face. “You’re high?”
Fuck. Fuck fucking fuck.
I can’t do this.
Sirius tried to glance away for a second, willing, wishing, begging his father would see the desperation in his eyes, but Orion did not, instead he saw a worthless son ruining the family’s pristine reputation.
“I asked if you’re high.”
Sirius squeezed his eyes shut, fear pooling in his stomach.
“ANSWER ME.” yelled Orion, pushing Sirius against the brick, watching as his son’s head lolled against the wall with a sharp thwack. His body seemed to give up already, as he slumped against his father’s fists like a ragdoll.
Sirius nodded numbly, wincing at the spot in his skull that was surely bleeding from being scraped across the sharp side of the house.
“You really are a disappointment Sirius, a fag and a drug user- someone would think I’m being punished by god with what type of son I got.” The man said, before letting go of the boy’s collar. Sirius’ shoulders sagged, his body tense with anger and fear.
His eyes widened at the realisation of what his father said. “I’m- I’m not gay.”
“A liar too.” His father spat, “Don’t think we don’t know, boy, as if you weren’t a disappointing enough son as it was.”
He knows.
They know.
He will ruin everything...
Ruin everything before he can then.
“I’m not your fucking son, Orion, I never have been.”
Fuck.
Before he could let out a breath his father’s fist came down sharp on the side of his skull.
When Sirius’s eyes opened again, and his body had stopped shaking enough to get himself out of foetal position, his father had gone. Orion hadn’t beaten him since last summer, but every blow felt as if it had been daily. Clutching the side of his cheek, Sirius clambered up and walked inside, catching a glance at his blooded face before wincing and ignoring his once prized reflection. The boy willed his mother was not near, for his father may beat him half to death, but his mother’s cruel words and sharp nails seemed to hurt more than any time she ever hit him. His father’s disappointment may have been shown physically, but Walburga Black seemed to hate Sirius with a passion so strong that starving her failure of a son or locking him in the dark both seemed viable ways to remove him from her life.
A floorboard creaked, and Sirius felt his whole-body tense once again. Instead of his mother, Regulus stepped round the corner, face sullen.
The younger boy glanced up at Sirius with distaste, but at least Regulus didn’t seem to be capable of hatred towards his older brother, mainly pity.
“What are you looking at Reggie?” Sirius spat, “Hoping maybe the broken nose will push you to most attractive Black?”
Regulus’s voice shook slightly, “Mother wants you out of the house… she said- she said she didn’t want your- your kind living here”.
“Couldn’t even say it herself, could she?”
Regulus looked angry. “She did try and get you- I’m just trying to help, so… so you don’t have to face her... Or face her again.”
“Well fuck you Reggie” Sirius muttered. “AND FUCK ALL OF YOU INBRED CUNTS IN THIS FUCKING FAMILY” he yelled, tipping his head back and letting his anger consume him.
“Sirius- “
“What Reggie? Gonna go tell on me to mother? Fill out your fucking role as golden child?”
“Just go, Sirius, leave this fucking hell and take your escape while you still can.”
“Reg- “
“You have James, go to him and be fucking happy”.
“Come with me Reggie?”
“I can’t, I don’t- “
“Reg, come with me.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Don’t be a pussy, Reg, it’ll be okay. I’ll keep us safe.”
“You can’t even keep yourself safe Sirius, you’re fucking useless.”
“Reggie- “
“Fuck off Sirius, I’ll go if I want to.” Regulus’s voice quivered.
“Go where, Reg? To Barty? Cause god knows his parents are dickheads, his dad and ours have fucking dinner parties!”
“Sirius- “
“Evan maybe, but his aren’t much better.”
“Sirius- “ The younger boy looked panicked and hurt.
“Or Oscar? Fucking Pandora? You have no one.”
“Fuck off Sirius. I mean it.”
“Fine.” Sirius yelled, “But don’t come running to me when they find out you’re the disappointment child too.”
Sirius stormed to the door, grabbed his still packed suitcase, and ran until his knees gave way.
As the older boy left, Regulus let out a breathy sob, “Please- please don’t go.”
*
London, Lupin Manor
Lyall Lupin wasn’t a brave man. He was tall, and reasonably strong, with a face attractive in his youth, but he was also a coward. He hid from too many things, the death of his wife and the grief of his son. Remus had been young when his mother died, and yet he vividly remembered how removed he had been from it all. His father’s cowardice echoing the way he lived.
And so, when Lyall decided to pack Remus up and throw him to a boarding school in the middle of pissing Devon he was unsurprised and uncaring.
Remus couldn’t say that he was looking forward to bunking down with what was presumably a hoard of posh twats for two years, but he knew that arguing with his father led to little accomplished. It wasn’t the first time he’d been sent away, but Remus knew that this time was different.
“Devon?” Remus had questioned when his father broke the news, “If you must hide your disappointment of a kid from all your dickhead colleagues the least you could do would be send me somewhere with nicer fucking weather.”
He’d said it calmly enough, and in all honesty, Remus didn’t really mean it, he’d always craved a place away from his father, away from Lupin Manor and the pretentious bastards that moved through its empty halls. He had nothing to miss, and at sixteen he was mature enough to know that no one would miss him either.
Remus had never really had any friends, he moved from school to school too quickly, and the rumours of him and the scars that littered his body caused any potential of his to shy away. It wasn’t that he was dumb, or badly behaved, he simply couldn’t try. He was angry and bored and alone, no motivation to do anything and in the end he always snapped. In the end he would see his father’s disappointment, never surprise, just quiet, cold, angry disappointment.
Remus sighed and threw himself down on his bed, Bowie blasting over the noise of his father’s yells through the door. He wasn’t going to miss his father’s constant shame, that was for sure. He had to survive the summer holidays, then two years at a hell school, and then he was free to smoke as much as he wanted, and laze around in bed until he shrivelled away.
“REMUS. TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN AND LISTEN TO ME!” Came his father’s distinguishable Welsh accent from behind the bedroom door.
Remus stood and opened his door to look down at the man, “I’m listening, Dad, what do you want?”
Lyall smiled falsely, “Remus, you need to focus this year, if you don’t want to do what I do that’s fine, but I can’t have you failing everything just because of your…” his father gestured to Remus’s tired eyes and dull posture.
“My what, Dad?”
“Nothing, Remus, I’m sorry, I just want you to make your mother proud.”
“Like you’d even know what she would’ve wanted.”
“Remus- “
“Dad, leave me alone, please, I can’t deal with you right now.”
Lyall looked ashamed but nodded and walked away. Remus didn’t miss the way his father slammed his office door.
He threw on a faded jumper over his old The Clash t-shirt and waited until his father had settled down before he opened his door and walked downstairs. He walked right out of the house with nothing but a tattered lighter in his jean pocket, and enough cash to cover a bus fare. The boy left his driveway at a jog and wondered aimlessly until he reached a bus stop. Remus took one to a more central London, and then hopped a tube barrier. He mapped out the path in his head, each step ingrained in his memory.
People paid attention to him, but not in a way that would suggest any concern, simply judgement. He was a person who stuck out in crowds. He towered over most people, but he still lived shy and lonely. Scars littered his arms, his face, his thighs- a mix of the crash and his own self-inflicted wounds.
Remus tipped his head back against the train and breathed heavily, his eyes closed until the tube pulled into his station. He hopped off and picked up pace, walking anywhere that could get him somewhere. He sat against a dirty wall and rummaged around in his pockets for any more spare change, or a carton of cigarettes. He had neither. “Fuck.” Remus murmured to himself, and blindly stood up as he continued to roughly pat down his jeans.
He collided with someone, his head smacking against their shoulder as he tried to stand.
“Bloody- Fuck, watch where you’re going mate.” Came the voice of the man he’d crashed into, or rather, as it seemed, the boy. He couldn’t have been any older than Remus.
The boy’s suitcases had tumbled out of his hands, and the boy turned around with a scowl that softened when he saw Remus..
Remus was slightly taken aback by him, by both his beauty and the manic look on his face. He was pretty- very- but his glassy grey eyes had blown wide pupils and were rimmed with red, from either tears or drugs. Possibly both. He was what Remus’s father would have described as a ‘delinquent’- piercings littering his face and stick n’ pokes littering his arms.
“Shit! Fuck, I’m sorry.” Remus said in response.
“S’okay.” Said the other boy, helping Remus stand properly before picking up his suitcase and the pack of cigs that had also fallen.
“Can I bum a fag?” Remus asked, feeling his fingers itching for a smoke.
The other boy snorted casually, “Push me over then take my fags, worst type of pickpocket I’ve met.”
He spoke with a posh accent that he seemed to be trying to lose.
“Fuck, you’re right, sorry, don’t worry about it.” Remus mumbled in embarrassment.
“I’m joking, sure you can.” He said as he offered the carton. “Bloody tall you are too, surprised I didn’t go flying.”
Remus smiled at the other boy, before lighting a fag and inhaling deeply. The pretty boy did the same. “Ain’t you got somewhere to be, or were you just in a rush to knock me over?”
Remus looked over with a smile, “Nowhere to be, nowhere to go.”
“Kicked out?”
“Walked out.”
The boy made a sound of understanding, “I got nowhere either, heading over to my mates right now, hopefully. Don’t know when he leaves for Devon with Pete. James and him always go ‘cos Pete’s got a summer house down there, it’s closer to school so their train journey is shorter, but that seems stupid to me because- Sorry… rambling”.
“S’okay.” Remus replied, “I got college in Devon too, well, I start in September.”
The other boy smiled, “Might see you there then?” he checked the time on an expensive looking watch, “Shit, I gotta hurry now, sorry mate.”
“It’s okay, thanks for the fag, and good luck finding your friends.”
“Thanks, good luck with your school.”
With a turn, the boy was gone, and Remus was left against a wall, smoking his fag and hoping he met people as pretty as that again.
*
Remus didn’t go home, but instead caught the northern line train to Camden Town. He’d always found comfort in the brash confidence and lack of judgement from many of the people who roamed the streets. He didn’t fit in with the Camden ‘punks’, but he enjoyed the atmosphere of touristy trinket stalls huddled next to leather sex shops.
It was nearing dark when he got to Camden Market, and many of the stalls had closed for the day. It was humid, with it being late July.
He wondered through the streets, hoping for another person he could grab a cigarette from. To his luck, a woman outside a pub offered him a fag and tried to make conversation. She was nice looking, but nowhere near as pretty as the boy he’d met earlier that day. Remus was uncomfortably aware of how close she was getting to him, and how much younger he must have been. In an attempt to not seem ungrateful for the cigarette she’d given him, he ducked away and told her he needed a piss. She had seemed annoyed but didn’t say anything as he scrambled away from the bar.
He walked on, now with a fag tucked between his fingers. The moon had risen, and he stretched his head back against the breeze, taking in his rare breaths of freedom. Remus could hear music blaring from somewhere a few streets over, so loud he could feel the noise in his bones. He’d always loved the feeling. The way that music could shake your bones or break your heart. Remus had always kept ‘rock band’ in the back of his mind, but with no friends and nowhere to play, the bass in his room lay relatively untouched.
Remus started towards a fast-food shop before remembering he had no cash, and that his card and phone were still abandoned in his room, alongside the college form that he had had to choose courses from. Classic Civilisation, English Literature, English Language. Remus had always loved reading, from the memories of being tucked in his mother’s arms, being read storybooks about werewolves, to lying in the dim of his room studying classic novels about monsters shunned from society. Books were escapism, to places far more cruel than his own.
Remus turned on his heel and headed back towards the tube station to shamefully make his return to Lupin Manor. His previous London “friends” had gotten done by the police a few months back and now the boy had few places to stay away from his own home. He was mid hop of the turnstiles when a man in a high-vis jacket noticed and pulled him back.
“Oi!” The man yelled, “Pay or walk, kid.”
Remus sighed in disappointment. “Please, I’ve got no cash on me, my phones at home, same with my card.”
The man grimaced. “I’m sorry lad, but I can’t let you, it’s just not allowed. Even if I did, what’s to say the people on the other side aren’t gonna stop you instead, I could get into shit for letting you go through, just following orders.”
Remus groaned, frustrated.
“Best I can do is let you call someone, maybe get you picked up.” The man said, “Got your mum’s number?”
He racked his brain to remember Lyall’s number, “Think I know my dad’s.”
“Good lad, now don’t take too long and don’t try to hop these, not everyone is as nice as me”.
Remus rolled his eyes once the man turned and typed in his father’s phone number.
After a few rings, Lyall picked up.
“Hello?” came his rough voice from the receiver.
“Hey, dad?”
“Remus?” Lyall questioned, “You’ve not been arrested, have you? Because I’m awfully busy and you really should know better.”
“No, dad, I’ve not been arrested, I’m- I’m just stuck at a tube station.”
He heard Lyall sigh.
“Which one? I’ll send a cab for you.”
Remus gave his father his location and settled on the pavement outside. He picked a half-smoked fag off the floor and lit it, ignoring the sanitation issues for a chance to stop the headache the had started pounding in the back of his skull. Less people crowded the streets now that all the families had gone home, although the occasional pub-goer still gave him an odd look as they crossed the street.
The black cab arrived shortly after, and Remus sat awkwardly in the back seat. The cabbie looked him up and down but said nothing as they started the tiring trip back to Lyall’s estate. Remus’s father was waiting by the gates as the taxi pulled up, paying the man and then turning to face his son. Remus considered giving the cabbie a good review for the complete lack of conversation on the drive.
His thoughts were interrupted by Lyall’s disapproving voice, “I give you all the money you need, I pay for your fares and fees but you still-“ Lyall sighed in frustration, “You still act like you’re being raised bloody homeless. Walking out and- and stealing for Christ’s sake, hopping tube barriers. You should be ashamed Remus. I worked so hard to get us to where we are, your mother too.”
Remus looked down, uncomfortable at the mention of his mother.
Lyall continued his rant, “I just hope the people at this school will be good for you. Maybe you need a better influence, boys that were raised well. I know I’ve tried so many different places, but every school I send you to, and you find something wrong. Well, this is your last chance Remus, or you are out of the house.”
“You can’t kick me out, dad.”
Lyall glared at him, “I’ve tried so bloody hard Remus, and if you continue to disappoint me then you simply give me no choice. I simply cannot keep supporting a boy who chooses to just throw his life away. You did this to yourself Remus, it’s up to you”
Remus groaned in annoyance. “I’ll bring my card next time I walk out then dad. That better for you? Don’t want your perfectly crafted reputation ruined by some boy you fucked up on.”
“Oh, you won’t be going out boy,” Lyall snarled, “You’re grounded. And don’t act like I’m being so unfair when you only ever do this to yourself. You always have, ever since your mother died it’s like you must make everyone else’s life a living hell. You’re so bloody difficult to manage.”
Remus felt his eyes sting with frustration, and his throat clogged up, met with the familiar burning sensation in his nose. Refusing to break in front of his father, he stormed into the house and to his room. When his door was slammed and locked, he finally let himself go. The boy collapsed in a pile on the floor, his breathing heavy and quick. Hot tears streamed down his face and onto the wood floor where they pooled. His hands raked through his hair, mousy brown strands coming away with his fingers. He could’ve screamed, could have grabbed a blade and-
Remus refused to cry around anyone, but the thought of breaking in front of his father made his skin crawl with anxiety. Lyall only had himself to blame: don’t force a child to hide their grief or do and live to face the consequences.
*
Remus’s days after that stayed repetitive and dull. He stayed in his room, refusing to leave for the so-called family dinners. Lyall would eventually give up and abandon the plates outside Remus’s bedroom door. He ate them- sometimes. His nights were spent systematically smoking the packs of cigarettes he thankfully had tucked in a box in the wardrobe. He refused to run out- his father’s voice was cause for headaches enough without the toil of withdrawal.
The boy counted down the days until his college started, although slightly regretting the fact that he hadn’t put up a fight over the boarding at the discovery of roommates. Three bloody roommates. Three posh twats that he actually had to eat, sleep and breathe with for two whole bloody years.
Remus wished he had friends that could magically save him from confinement, but alas the last friend he had properly made had been a young, freckled girl he had met as a boy, during his limited time in an infant’s school in Bath. His father had hoped the fresh air would help the recent loss of the young boy’s mother. It did not. Bath was hardly fresh air anyway, but Remus assumed any air was fresher than the haze that seemed to cover London. He had made other friends, but they had never cared about him, more just used him to buy fags, or talk to dealers. He never felt wanted by anyone else, apart from that girl who had cried and cried when she realised little Remus was going back to London. Before he had gone, she had taken his face in her pudgy hands and looked at him, eyes wide with childlike innocence. She had promised him that if they found each other in the future they were to get married. Remus new he wouldn’t see her again, and he doubted she even remembered, but he still cried over the fact that a girl who had known him for a month when he was eight would have wanted to be friends with him forever.
It was a week until September when Remus was finally allowed to leave the house again. Lyall had said specifically that the freedom was only so the boy could buy any supplies and clothes that he would need for his first term of college. Remus did exactly that, buying a moth bitten grandad jumper from a charity shop before stocking up on cigarettes and books. His last fiver was spent on a vintage Bowie poster he found in the back of an old record shop. His packing was rather simple, a case for his clothes (that mainly consisted of knitwear and glam rock t-shirts), and a case for piling with books, posters, fag cartons and tatty memories of his mother.
His apparent uniform would be supplied by Highgate Private Boarding School and College, he cursed at the idea of shirts and ties, but at least the uniform was only for “occasions such as lessons and church”, so he wouldn’t have to be walking round in a blazer on a fucking Saturday.
Remus felt as though all he had done recently was research a school full of old money dickheads and regret every life choice that had led him to this moment. He awoke on September 1st to find his cases had already been taken downstairs. They were found lying on the stairs next to a hastily wrapped box that had two cards on top. One simply read: Remus, in his father’s monotone scrawl. The other, far more faded envelope read “Do not open until you know who you are”. It was his from his mother, Remus could never forget the way Hope Lupin’s handwriting curled at the “Ys” and flourished at the end.
Lyall was nowhere to be seen, no doubt in his office doing useless meetings with his braindead colleagues while completely ignoring his only son’s departure. Remus stood in his hallway, peering outside for the cab that would be collecting him shortly. He glanced in the mirror and tried to fix his mess of brown waves that had gotten slightly too long, and now fell to his dark eyes. The boy only had to wait a few minutes before a taxi pulled up outside his driveway, and a cabbie jumped out to help him transport his luggage to the boot of the cab.
Remus took one last look at his house, as he always did, and then turned to the start of it all.